Recently as part of my work with a venture capital firm here in Indy (PSVF), I was tasked with developing my own personal investment thesis. This task was largely focused on finding out what areas of investment I would consider to be my expertise and as such, which ones I would be able to make better investments in than other VCs in various areas. I spent a decent amount of time thinking about this and, not surprisingly, focused in on the IT services/web as a platform type investment areas as possible candidates. From here I spent some time reading various other VC blogs and notes on the topic and really came to like some of the posts I was reading from The Foundry Group and Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures. In light of that, I wrote up two separate versions of my investment thesis and the one I liked most is as follows:

Summing up an investment thesis can be quite difficult, especially given the incredible array of innovation occurring in all industries today. Nevertheless, Union Square Ventures seemed to put in best when noting that “We believe that when it comes to start up investing, success is dependent on understanding the forces shaping a developing market more than knowing the trade of investing.” In that light, my focus has developed into one of information technology. Specifically, I have come to develop an intricate understanding of web trends, especially those that cater to web as a platform for applications in the future. Although I do not strictly look at platform-type technologies, I feel that investing upon the framework and looking at technologies that might eventually play in that space is important. Web technologies are continually changing the face of business, media, entertainment, and life and as such, investments that can further develop those ideas will continually be able to reap substantial returns for years to come.

From here, I had the overlord Paul take a look at it for feedback purposes. After some chatting he managed to add some extra zest to the idea and really began to focus on future technologies that will actually change IT infrastructure. Long story short, I am constantly working on this thesis an moving slightly away from strictly web as a platform etc. and will be building in various other industry trends. Stay tuned for an updated version sometime in the future…

(edit: Obligatory nerd/overused theme pic since text can get boring!)

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